Mere Mortals
by averygirl
Summary: Who or what does Stefan encounter in that alleyway? A Stefan-centric story told in drabble form. It is kind of violent so be warned.
1. Altercation

**Mere Mortals**

_**Stefan is stuck trying to unravel a mystery when he encounters a strange woman who may not be entirely human… AU, I guess you'd say.**_

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><p><span><strong>A – Altercation<strong>

Terrified screams that reached his ears halfway down the deserted street sent him hurtling forward. His legs pumped powerfully and his hands balled into fists in front of him as he broke into a dead run.

It took him all of two seconds to reach the mouth of the alley. He heard movement behind a dumpster tucked away in the dark; smelled the unmistakable odor of human blood carried on the air. The screams had died away now. Silence reigned. Stefan wondered exactly what he would find.

He could have walked away but he simply had to know what was going on. Damon would say it was his savior complex at work. Stefan would say it was actually his glutton for punishment complex.

He edged around the dumpster and spotted the figure of a petite woman. She was doubled over and her long flaxen hair whipped wildly in the sudden breeze. Her face was tucked into a torn woolen jacket and remained obscured.

"_Miss?"_ He asked, dropping his hands to his side, not wanting to scare her. "Miss?" He prompted again when at first she didn't respond. "Are you okay?"

He saw her eyes first. They moved up to meet his –dark blue and murky with tears. Tears and unconcealed rage.

"Don't you dare come any closer," she spat at him in a decidedly hoarse, deep voice. "I'll do it again," she shouted. "I'll do to you what I did to them!"

She squared her tiny shoulders and stood up now, uncurling her body. She was small and curvy; could have possibly fit right about under his chin. But that wasn't what was on his mind – nor what made his eyes bug out. It was the blood he saw smeared all over her face and clothes.

"I won't hurt you," Stefan said. "I just-" He broke off as he finally noticed a trail of blood along the trash-strewn ground. It led further back into the alley. He now smelled something else familiar – _death._

_Very_ recent death.

His eyes swept the alleyway and he spotted two crumpled bodies in the corner. Their faces were mangled and unrecognizable; their eyeballs gouged clean out, but he knew they were two men. He looked back at the tiny blonde who was staring up at him with decided mistrust in her cobalt eyes.

"You did that," he said in shock, pointing a surprisingly steady hand towards the two corpses.

She nodded and cocked her head at him. Then she ran towards him, screaming bloody murder at the top of her lungs.

He sidestepped her easily enough and she went crashing to the ground, skidding on her hands and knees. He heard the unmistakable shredding of fabric as she hit the ground hard and her denim jeans ripped at the legs.

She turned back to face him with rage in her eyes and then careened to her feet. He fully expected her to attempt to charge him again but she instead turned on her heel and went loping out of the alley, leaving Stefan behind with the two freshly butchered men.

Hard as he tried, he couldn't wrap his mind around what had happened. The woman had smelled human but yet that superhuman strength of hers said otherwise. She was like no creature Stefan had ever come up against before. To be able to kill two grown men in such a violent and vicious way, she couldn't be mere mortal...

Aloud he wondered, _"What the hell just happened … And what the hell __**was **__she?" _


	2. Beast

**B – Beast**

_Elena stood in a field of flowers – delicate flowers that seemed to be straining upwards to greet the sky. Bright sunlight bounced on the taut curls in her dark hair. She looked quite possibly, more beautiful than he had ever seen her look - even just wearing a sheer white slip dress with a thin leather belt looped around her tiny waist. She appeared to be happy too - smiling cheekily as she waved her tiny hand, beckoning him to her._

_"Stefan," she said. "Stefan, come over here. I want to show you something, my love."_

_It had been so long since she had called him "my love"; since she had looked at him in that certain way – with such tender emotion in her amazing doe eyes. He was desperate to reach her, to hold her in his arms once again._

_"I'm coming, Elena," he called back and started the short distance to her. However, it seemed to take an inordinately long time to reach her when she was really just mere feet away._

_He was so close to her though – he couldn't stop now, not when he was certain that he would be able to feel her warmth again, to kiss her impossibly soft lips._

_**Two more steps,** he told himself._

_"Stefan, hurry!" Elena called to him. "Hurry, please."_

_"I am – I am trying anyway," Stefan said, when suddenly a big sink hole - filled with thick, tar-black mud - opened up beneath his feet. He gasped in surprise as he struggled to pull himself free. However, the quick movements only caused him to sink deeper into the bilge._

_He was ankle-deep in the sludge now. He was sinking fast._

_His green eyes shot to Elena. She was still reaching out to him. "Stefan, please," she cried. "Please come here!"_

_"I'm trying, I swear I am," he said. He gritted his teeth, trying to move, but he was slogged down more each time, sinking further into the seemingly endless pit of darkness._

_"STEFAN!" Elena screamed. Now she sounded frantic._

_Stefan looked at Elena and desperately reached for her hand but he was a fingers-breadth too far away. He couldn't feel the reassuring, familiar heat of her touch._

_The sky opened up then and it began to pour down rain in torrents. The mud got thicker and thicker still and Stefan sunk deeper and deeper into the mud. "Elena, get help!" He called to her._

_"No, I'm staying here with you," she returned. Her hands went to grasp her shoulders and she shivered. Something was very wrong here. They both sensed it._

_Stefan started to encourage her on again, but broke off when he caught sight of something eerie – a lone figure crossing the field; a small, sloping figure. The darkness made it damned near impossible to see their face, but Stefan sensed danger coming in every lightning-quick step they took. After so many years, he could smell danger._

_"Elena, run!" He shouted. "Run, right now."_

_"What – why? No. I'm not leaving you."_

_"GO!" Stefan shouted at her. "Just go. NOW!"_

_But she didn't move and in the next moment, the other person came into focus. But it wasn't a person at all. It couldn't be. It was a small thing – a beast with a shock of white-blonde hair. Just then Stefan knew whom or what he was seeing. The monster from the alley._

_"ELENA!" he screamed. He struggled harder to free himself from the mire but only went still deeper down into it. He screamed as the woman from the alley came into full view. Her face was covered in blood and chunks of vomit and there was a twisted smile on her face._

_Stefan kept shouting at Elena to run but she didn't. She just kept vainly reaching for him. She never saw the creature coming. She was grabbed her by her hair and hurled to the ground. Elena shrieked in terror as the thing began to attack her as she thrashed about. As Stefan watched in abject horror, the thing ripped her apart piece by piece until there was nothing left ..._

Stefan sat up with a jolt, panting heavily, his eyes burning. If his heart actually beat, it would have been slamming violently against his rib cage right then.

It took a long moment for him to realize that he wasn't in a field of flowers; rather, that he was at the boarding house, holding onto the edge of the sofa. Elena wasn't here. She hadn't been here in sometime. She wasn't in danger either.

_Was she?_

This _was_ the fourth time this week though that he'd had this particular nightmare…

Of course, he well knew that dreams could be prophetic in nature but still, he wanted to believe that this one was only fueled by what he had seen that night in the alleyway. Surely Elena was fine. She was miles away at Whitmore College, enjoying her freshman year, just as she should be.

So why did Stefan suddenly feel a preternatural chill wrapping around his spine? Were the haunting dreams simply warnings? Was something bad coming? His logical brain told "no". That whatever thing he had seen in the alleyway over a week ago would be long gone now.

How could he be completely sure though?

The answer was, that he couldn't be.

He sighed as he resolutely pushed himself to his feet and made his way over to the phone. He dialed.

"Hey," he said when a familiar voice answered. "It's Stefan… I need to see you."


	3. Chase

**C – Chase**

The quad at Whitmore was teaming with activity as Stefan pushed his way through the crowd – or _tried_ to anyway. He kept being waylaid by large groups of students congregating on the sidewalks and grass. They obviously could give a damn that he was in a hurry here.

He had called Bonnie, asking her to free up some time between classes to talk. He wanted to ask her some questions about what kind of creature might have been in that alleyway the other night. As a former valiant student of the dark arts, she may very well know something that he didn't.

He also wanted to warn Elena that she could be in danger. It was his instinct to want to protect her, even after all this time.

Stefan heard a Frisbee whizzing towards him and quickly reached up and snatched it before it could make contact with his head. He rolled his eyes as a gaggle of girls in tiny tops and booty shorts came running over to him with lusty smiles pasted on their unnaturally tan faces.

"How did you catch that? You weren't even looking in that direction," one of them - a buxom redhead – asked in wide-eyed wonder as Stefan handed her back the diskus.

"Just lucky, I guess," he said, starting to press forward again.

"You should play with us – Frisbee, I mean," another girl twittered.

"I'd like that, I really would, but unfortunately I'm already running late to an important lecture." He looked at his non-existent watch and then scooted past, pushing through the crowd once more.

He finally reached the residential sector of campus. He was less than ten steps from Elena, Caroline and Bonnie's dormitory when from his periphery, he suddenly spotted a flash of white. _White-blonde hair._

He whipped around. A petite young woman skirted towards another building across the way. Stefan stood there with his mouth gaping open for a long moment. It was _her._ The monster from the alleyway, although she was not covered in blood or mucus this time, but rather was dressed in a jaunty little yellow skirt, carrying a tennis racket and looking decidedly… _normal._ As if she was just another coed.

_Stefan knew better._

He quickly found his bearings and charged after her. He was shouting at her that he needed to talk to her but she kept moving forward as if she hadn't heard him. She slipped into the building as Stefan gave chase.

He went skidding towards the door and was quickly bounced backwards. He couldn't get in. It was a dwelling of the living, after all.

_Dammit._

He was desperate to get inside and stop that femme–creature, from whatever she/it might do next. She was far too close to his friends for his liking.

He spotted a chubby young woman heading for the dorm. He quickly grabbed her arm and yanked her to a stop.

"Help! Security. _Somebody help!"_ She shouted and started to reach for the whistle she wore around her jowly neck.

"Don't do that," Stefan hissed. He then looked into her bright blue eyes. "Invite me in."

The girl dropped her whistle and nodded, her face taking on a decidedly vacant look. She held open the door for him and said, "Come in."

He whispered at her to forget what had just happened. He then started for the staircase, intending to search every bedroom, shower stall, nook and cranny, to find the thing from the alley. He was convinced that whatever she was, she was a threat to everyone and with his friends so close by, he wasn't taking any chances.

His foot had just settled on the second step when a husky, feminine voice floated up from behind him. _"Excuse me!"_

He considered ignoring the woman but soon felt a hand tugging his arm. "I_ said_ excuse me," she said. "You can't go up there. Not without checking in with me first."

Stefan groaned and finally turned around. A very attractive, mocha-skinned young woman stood before him, hands resting on her slender hips.

She looked at him with some disinterest, as if she saw his type all the time, and then moved over to a little desk and chair in an alcove beneath the staircase. "What's your name?" She asked in a business-like tone of voice.

"Uh-"

_"Your name,"_ she said again, tapping a No. 2 pencil against a ledger.

Stefan shook his head. "Does it matter? I'm here to see my girlfriend."

The young woman cocked her head, looking doubtful. A black curl tumbled free from her ponytail and she swept it back.

"Debby – well, Deborah. That's my girlfriend's name," Stefan said. He didn't know why he was even entertaining this conversation when every second that passed; someone could be getting their eyeballs removed forcibly from their sockets.

"Debby – well, Deborah… I need a last name," she said dubiously. She sighed and put down her pencil. "Look, I don't want to be a hard-ass here but it's my job to find out who is coming and going. That's why the school pays me the 'big bucks'."

Stefan sighed and moved over to the desk to face her. "Okay I'll tell you the truth," he said. Green eyes met dark amber ones as Stefan fixed her with a stare. "I need to find someone and you are going to let me upstairs so I can do just that." He looked at her nametag now. _"Thanks, Casey," _he added as an afterthought.

She nodded dutifully; her eyes hazy. "Right that way," she said, pointing up the stairs.

Stefan smiled a bit. "Now that wasn't so hard, was it?"

He started up the steps then, wondering exactly what he would find.

**A/N:** Feedback… anyone? lol


End file.
